Posts Tagged ‘British Reign’

My paternal grandfather Nalin Kumar Dhirajlal Nanavati was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1915, during the British Raj. He was the second of three children born to my great grandfather, an Indian civil servant (ICS) from Gujrat. The family belonged to a trading community called Surati Baniyas.

Nalinkumar Dhirajlal Nanavati, my grandfather, was a dashing soldier with the Allied Forces in the 1940’s. He was a soldier in the British Eighth Army and a Major with the 5th Royal Maratha Light Infantry. When the forces were ordered to go and fight the wars of WWII, he left behind a beautiful wife of Bengali and French parentage and a young daughter. But the family back home didn’t hear from him a long time and his beautiful wife assumed that he has passed away in war.

But he did return to India, a battle scarred survivor, victorious from saving peninsular Italy from the German Nazis. Later, he was awarded a military cross for his bravery in the Battle of Monte Cassino. However, he had won the war but lost his family, his wife and daughter, to another man. His daughter later married into a Parsi Baronetcy in Bombay. As time passed my grandfather became Lt. Colonel in the Indian Army, and he met Sharada Ramaiah, the woman who would become my grandmother.

My grandmother Sharada Ramaiah and my grandfather Nalin met over a game of tennis in New Delhi. He was charmed by her intellectual personality. Both my grandparents from my dad’s side of the family came from educated families and had english governesses. Grandma Sharada (born in 1925) was a Brahmin from Karnataka, and even though it was an inter-caste marriage, her mother did not object. My grandfather was so charming and friendly that it really did not matter whose ancestors were traders and whose were priests. As with many families in India, they came from the same class though not the same caste. She took on the role of being the Army wife with utter grace, entertaining diplomats and politicians with great élan. My grandfather was by then the commandant of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun and later the military attaché for India with the Indian embassy in Moscow. He enjoyed huge success and a meteoric rise to the rank of a Major General. In 1959, Sanjeev Nanavati, their only child, my dad, was born.

Tragically, the beautiful life my grandparents and father enjoyed was to be short lived. My grandfather Nalin was sent on a non-family posting in Kashmir where he was killed on the November 22, 1963 at the age of 45 in one of the most tragic helicopter crashes of all times. All six senior officers including my grandfather died. The other officers were –

Many conjectured that the helicopter was sabotaged because so many senior officers lost their lives at the same time, but the Indian Army ruled out sabotage and stated that it was an accident. Later as cautionary rule, the government banned senior officers of the army to ever travel together. The same rule now applies to several corporations too.

Grandma Sharada Nanavati was widowed at a young age of 34, and my dad Sanjeev, was just four years old. With only 12 rupees in her bank account, it took Sharada many years to get a succession certificate (issued by a civil court to the legal heirs of a deceased person). She never took a paisa from her wealthy relatives and instead chose to live her life with dignity and raise her son alone. Fortunately she was educated with a Masters in History, Politics and Economics and was a journalist too. With recommendations from Field Marshall Sam Maneckshaw, she began working at the WHO and then later with the USIS in New Delhi. This was a great achievement for a woman in her times.

As a single and independent mother, my grandmother educated my dad, and with blood, sweat and tears built a modest home in the ‘War Widows colony’ in Delhi. Daddy and Grandma remain very grateful to the Indian Army. My granddad was a war hero but I believe my grandma who is 89 years old now, is a hero too.

This photograph of my grandfather with his college mates was taken in 1933/1934 at the King Edward Medical College in Lahore (now Pakistan). He was around 25 years old at the time and he and the others in this picture were the only non-white students of their batch.

My grandfather, Dr. Preetam Pal Singh was born in 1908 at Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi District (now in Pakistan) and served as a doctor in the British Army. He was posted at Manora Island Cantonment, near Karachi when partition of India took place in 1947.

My great grandmother, grandfather, his wife, and two aunts boarded the train to Firozpur (Indian Punjab) and later reached Faridkot, where he and the family stayed for three nights at the railway platform before the Maharaja of Faridkot employed my grandfather as his personal physician. My grandfather was allotted an official house, and my father was born in 1950. This huge house in red (called the Laal Kothi) still exists and was recently visited by my father.

Later in 1957 my grandfather specialized in Radiology from the King George Medical College in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh). In the 1960s, the whole family moved and settled down in Patiala, Punjab and I have fond memories of visiting the city to meet my grandparents. My grandfather passed away in 2003, at the ripe old age of 94.

These are the memories of my mother, Oonagh who was born in India to my grandparents, Glyndon Ralph O’Leary (Mike) and Sheilagh Anges Mary Maguire. – Shaun

“My father, Glyndon Ralph O’Leary was fondly known as Mike. He was born in 1902 in Toronto, Canada to Winifred and Ralph O’Leary, who were of Irish descent.

At the age of Twelve, he left Canada and began his military career in the Boys service, Indian Subcontinent from 1914 – 1919 and continued in various regiments serving the British Empire on and off until 1946.

Mike was also a Practical Motor Engineer: his brothers and he owned and worked in a motorcycle workshop and showroom called the O’Leary Brothers in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh. They also designed and built a motorcycle called the White Streak. However, it never made it to production. At one point, they bought an old motorcycle, a Brough Superior from T. E. Lawrence (The very original Lawrence of Arabia) and exhibited it in their showroom.

While in the army in Lahore, Mike manufactured scale models for Forest Research, Rural upliftment, P.W.D. and Irrigation departments and also tactical models for training of mechanised fighting vehicles. 12 such gold medal standard models manufactured by him were on display in the Forestry Department of Lahore Central Museum. I wonder if they are still there.

Mike married Sheilagh Anges Mary Maguire in October 1928 in Lahore and subsequently had three children – Michael, Oonagh and Larry. Later the children went to boarding school in Mussoorie: Wynberg Girls High School and Allen Memorial Boys School.

In between postings, and to earn more money, Mike and Sheilagh also joined a circus, I don’t remember the name of the circus anymore, but it was in Lahore and managed by a Captain.Edwards. Mike trained would ride the Drome (‘Wall of Death’ or ‘Maut ka Kuan’) on his motorbike and also climbed a high ladder (in costume): he would douse himself with Petrol, set himself on fire and dive into a tank below full of water. Sheilagh, my mother, play her part too: she stood on stage with a cigarette between her lips while Captain Edwards, trained as an ace shooter in the military, would fire a pistol at the cigarette.

In Sibi, (a Balochistan province of now Pakistan) Mike and family represented the only military presence there, amid railway workers and their families. For leisure, Mike would hire ‘beaters’ and go on a wild boar shoot – the beaters would make as much noise as they could with sticks, tins etc. to flush out the boar then Mike would shoot down a couple. Back home the meat would be shared with neighbours.

On other occasions, the family went ‘fishing’, travelling on a trolley (a bench like structure on a platform with four wheels which fitted on the railway lines). Hired help would run along the lines, bare foot and push the trolley along and when the lake was reached, a halt was called. Mike would unsportingly throw a couple of sticks of dynamite into the water and the stunned fish would rise to the surface: all the men and boys would jump in the shallow end and retrieved the fish which, again, was shared with local families. His last posting was probably in Quetta (also a Balochistan province of now Pakistan).

Mike (Capt. Glyndon Ralph O’Leary) died in September 1945 during a Diabetic Coma. My mother Sheilagh and us children then moved to Meerut, Uttar Pradesh to stay with our maternal grandparents. A year later and a few months before Partition, in September 1946 we emigrated to England.”

On the ship, a whole trunk of personal belongings was apparently lost overboard and it included most of the family photos: very few images survive today. This is one of them.

This image of my wife’s great great grandfather was photographed in a studio in Bulandshahr, then a part of the United Provinces in India. In those days there were only a few trained doctors in a city, and a civil surgeon was considered to be a ‘top medical practitioner’ as well as the last hope of anyone with an ailment requiring surgery.

Shambhu Nath Misra was awarded “Rao Bahadur” medal by the British government, the top civilian award of the time which was an equivalent of “Order of British Empire -OBE”. He wears that medal proudly around his neck in this picture. The medal has the British crown connecting the loop to the neck string. In the centre is a circular portion with etched words Rao Bahadur that is barely legible because of picture quality.

He graduated with a Degree in Medicine in 1899 from The University of Panjab located in Lahore of undivided India. (In 1956, the university was relocated to Chandigarh, Punjab, India). At the time of his graduation the university awarded an all-in-one degree- Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics. Today the three are considered separate medical specialties.

A very fashionable man, in this picture, he sports a bowtie, very western for an Indian in 1920s. His ‘Head Cap’, was common head gear for a man of stature, though unlike the kings and other royalty, it indicated status as a civilian. Completing his attire is a 3 piece suit, a silk vest, and I think a pocket watch which was specifically worn on the left pocket.

He was a very wealthy man, earning a salary of Rs 14,000 a month. And the ‘civil surgeon’ tag was important enough to get a letter delivered to him with only “Shambhu Nath Misra, Civil Surgeon, Bulandshahar” as the address. He supported many families of needy relatives and had significant real estate assets. He fathered 2 daughters and 3 sons, one of whom was the great grandfather of my wife. Two of his other sons emigrated to the United Kingdom. The family prestige and assets, both were gradually lost and it never regained the glory of his achievements. He suffered from diabetes and other common ailments, and passed away around the age of 70.

I first learned of the Indian Memory Project from an article in ‘The Australian’ of May 2011 (a News Ltd daily newspaper). After visiting the website, it occurred to me that others searching the pages might be interested in a brief glimpse of Indian Army life from the viewpoint of a British officer and his family in 1945-46. It may shed a personal light on that brief moment in time just before the watershed of Independence and the bloody shambles the politicians made of partition.

This images is of my parents taken on 23rd April 1946, and it show them at the top of the Kohat Pass, near Tribal Territory. My mother is wearing a revolver!. On the back of some of these photographs, she has captioned them as ‘the gateway to 30 miles of tribal territory’.

My father Ronald Osborne was born in Wales in 1910 and worked as sales manager in London for Geo. Wimpey & Co., then a large builder of houses. He volunteered for the British Army in 1939 just before universal conscription was introduced. He served initially with the Royal Engineers and fought in the abortive Norway campaign before undergoing commando training and going on the far more successful Lofoten Islands raid to destroy an oil refinery held by the German forces. Selected for officer training, he found that the pay in the Indian Army was higher than in the British forces and chose to be commissioned into the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, serving in the North African and Italian campaigns, where he rose to the rank of major, until the Indian Army was repatriated.

My mother Beryl (née Beardsley) was also born in 1910 and grew up in Derbyshire. She moved to London as a young woman where she met and married my father. I was born in 1934. When my father joined the army, we went to live with her parents in Kingston-upon-Thames, where they owned two shops. At some point in 1940 a stray German bomb destroyed the shops and my mother, grandmother and I moved to stay with relations in Derbyshire before settling in a small village called Kirk Hallam. My grandfather stayed in Kingston, continuing to run his shops from two garages.

Understandably impatient after five years of wartime separation, my mother joined the Women’s Indian Voluntary Service (WIVS) as a means of getting out to India. By coincidence, she and my father were on separate ships passing through the Suez Canal at the same time (I think in September 1945). They met briefly when their ships docked in Bombay, before travelling to their respective postings. Initially she worked in the WIVS headquarters in New Delhi, organising the postings of other British volunteers as they arrived. Seeing little point in staying in New Delhi while my father was stationed in Jalandhar, she surreptitiously posted herself there! At some time in 1946, my father’s unit was transferred to Kohat.

In 1945, I was 11 years old, attending a boarding school in Leicester in the UK Midlands and spending school holidays with my maternal grandparents in Kingston-upon-Thames or with my father’s brother’s family in Porthcawl, South Wales. Sadly I no longer have any of the letters from my parents, so the story of their time in Jalandhar and Kohat is based solely on my memory and the scribbled captions on the backs of old, fading black-and-white photographs in the album I began to compile that year.

This image was photographed in Delhi, shortly after my paternal grandparents Chameli and Phool Chand, got married. She was 14 and he was 16. It was unusual for couples in our family to be photographed, especially holding hands, which turned out to be an indication of the unconventional direction their lives would take. They were Gandhians and freedom fighters.

The only visible reminder of her brush with the radical politics of the freedom movement was the milky cornea in her right eye, the result of an infection picked up in Lahore Jail where she had spent 4 months in 1932. Otherwise, she was Ammaji: gentle, almost luminous in her white saris, regular with her samaik (Jain prayer), someone who would take great pleasure, on our Sunday visits, to feed us dal chawal (rice and lentils) mixed with her own hands.

My grandmother grew up in a village called Bahadarpur in Alwar, about four hours south of Delhi, in a deeply conservative Jain family. The family was locally influential; they were traders in cotton turbans, woven by local Muslim weavers and sold in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. They also were moneylenders. As with much of rural Rajasthan, the women were in purdah. Within two years of their marriage, their first child, my father, was born.

Ammaji moved with my grandfather into the family home in the teeming bylanes of Dariba in Chandni Chowk. But he had developed a growing interest in Gandhi and the nationalist movement and soon broke away from the family business to join the Delhi Congress. In 1929, soon after the call for Poorn Swaraj at the Lahore session, he was arrested for the first time.

My grandfather’s stint in jail exposed him to even more radical politics. Along with his Congress membership, he also became part of the revolutionary Hindustan Socialist Republican Association which counted Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad amongst its members. (Azad, in an interview, acknowledged that he received his first revolver from my grandfather). He also became a reporter for the nationalist newspaper at the time, Vir Arjun, whose editor he had met in jail.

In 1932, Gandhi called for a major nationwide satyagraha against foreign goods. It was also the year a bomb was thrown at Lord Lothian, an act in which my grandfather played a role. When he told my grandmother that he was going to jail, she said this time she would go to prison first, by taking part in the swadeshi satyagraha. The household was stunned. Ammaji’s life had revolved around ritual, the kitchen and ghoonghat. Her decision led to the following heated exchange; witnessed by my father, age 7:

Babaji: “You don’t know anything about jail.”

Ammaji: “Nor did you when you were first arrested.”

Babaji: “Who will look after the children ?”

Ammaji: “You will.”

Sensing that things were getting out of hand, my great grandmother, Badi Ammaji locked both of them into a room. But my grandfather apparently fashioned an escape from the window using knotted dhotis and Ammaji, head uncovered, marched with other women pouring out of their homes towards the main bazaar. The crowd had swelled into hundreds. There were cries of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai’. As they began to move around picketing shops selling foreign goods, they were arrested, taken to Delhi Jail, and charged with four and half months of rigorous imprisonment.

Her arrest, not surprisingly, outraged the family in Alwar. Umrao Singhji, Ammaji’s father, came to Delhi and had a big argument with my great grandfather, accusing the in-laws of ‘ruining our princess’. But Ammaji found an ally in her in-laws, who refused to pay her bail out of respect for her satyagraha. Umrao Singhji then tried to talk his daughter out of it when she was being transferred to Lahore Jail. ‘Chameli, apologise, ask for pardon.’ But Ammaji asked him not to worry. ‘Bolo Bharat Mata ki Jai’, she said, as she was being led away in a rickshaw along with the other prisoners. ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, responded her father.

She returned from Lahore four months later, a minor heroine. But there was also loss. Lakshmi, her daughter, five years old, fell from the balcony of the house and died when she was in Lahore jail. And there was the milky cornea – the loss of an eye. But her world had somewhat widened. She wore her ghoonghat a few inches higher. She gave her Rajasthani ghaghra choli away, and wore only hand-spun.

She spun on the charkha. She would attend meetings with other women on matters of community reform, like widow remarriage and also became more involved in the activities of the local sthanak, the Jain community’s prayer and meditation hall. She had, as it turns out, quietly fashioned her own blend of Jain renunciation and Gandhian abstinence.

In the years that followed, my grandfather retained his engagement with the freedom struggle. He would often go to sit in the family’s property agency in Model Town, but his real passion, which consumed most of his last 30 years was compiling a massive index of freedom fighters, a staggering 11 volume chronicle of the stories of countless ordinary men and women, who took part in protests, bomb conspiracies, went to jail, lived and died. For my grandmother, it was a gradual return to a more conventional domesticity.

But, that single action that morning in 1932 had opened up a world: a young woman from a deeply conservative family, who became the first Jain woman in her neighbourhood to go to jail, who was named on the day of her arrest in the Hindustan Times with all the other satyagrahis and who would return home to other freedoms, even if minor, like a ghoonghat that could be worn a few inches back.

And for that, she would one day have an award named after her. The Chameli Devi Jain Award.

My father, late Lt. Col. K Vasudevan Nair (left), then a Major, receiving Lt. Gen. I.D Verma, the Signal Officer in Chief, at the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering, Mhow, Indore, Madhya Pradesh. December 1970

Image and Text contributed by Dev Kumar Vasudevan

This image as my mother Mrs. Ponnamma Vasudevan tells me, is when my father, then a Major & a senior instructor at one of the wings of Military College of Telecommunication Engineering (MCTE), Mhow, was going to deliver a lecture to student officers attending the Higher Command (HC) course at the College ofCombat, presently known as Army War College. The Signal Officer in Chief (SO-in-C) Lt. Gen. I.D Verma (right) had also attended this talk along with the then MCTE Commandant Brigadier Pinto. The SO-in-C is the senior most Signals officer and one of the principal staff officers to the Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

My father had enlisted himself in the British Indian Army in 1943 and at the time of Independence, was posted at GHQ Signals which is now a defunct unit. GHQ Signals was also responsible for taking care of communications for the Prime Minister’s Office. This posting enabled him to meet many national leaders at close range.

He was also selected to be a part of the first batch of Indian and Pakistani personnel to be trained in Cipher duties – a department which the British had earlier not permitted Indians into.With Independence inevitable, a group of personnel, my father included, was carefully screened, selected and trained for future Indian and Pakistani armies.

My father passed away in May 2009 at the age of 83. Lt. Gen. Verma, who was commissioned by the Indian Army during the early 40s and served as a Commandant of the School of Signals, Mhow at the time of India’s Independence, also passed away in 2009. As far as I know, very few personnel of the Corps of Signals who served during the pre-independence era, remain alive.

This photograph of my Great great grandfather Mukuntha Madhav Reddy Yekollu (sitting far left, on chair) was taken in my ancestral home in Yelagiri near Jolarpet. He later went on to become a honorary civil magistrate/judge with a capacity to impose fines upto Rs.10 ( a princely sum then). He committed suicide in 1907 for reasons no one knew, but we conjecture- it was depression. All I know of the two European gentleman in the picture is that one was a Railway supervisor of Jolarpet which was an important railway junction. The other was a Police Inspector of Italian origin.

My Great Great Grandfather was educated up to form three. He had two wives, four sons, six to seven daughters and an elder brother who died on the eve of his marriage.

The last time I visited my ancestral home in India I also found a letter that was never posted (Dated : 1927) With an interest to find out more about my ancestry I searched and found distant uncles and aunts. Some were not welcoming at all, and some wouldn’t allow old photographs to be scanned. This photo was given to me by my great grand father’s sister’s son. He thought it would be better off with me than him.

My maternal grandfather, Narasinhbhai was a revolutionary man. Records of British India describe him as ‘most dangerous man in Bombay Presidency ‘. He was exiled from British India for writing proscribed books. Though the Maharaja of Baroda clandestinely supported him. After completing his exile term in Germany and East Africa, C.F. Andrews persuaded him to join Ravindranath Tagore in Shantiniketan . He taught German there for a short time and then returned to his native town Kheda to support Gandhiji’s Salt Satyagraha . He became a leader in Kheda district. to mobilise Satyagraha. Standing behind him, first from left is his grandson Dr. Shantibhai Patel who also actively participated in the freedom struggle and later became a successful scientist . Narsinhbhai’s daughter, Shanta Patel (my mother), sits, first from right with my father G.P.Patel, standing behind her. My father, G.P Patel supported Narasinhbhai’s views, work and philosophy. They all were followers of Gandhiji.

This picture with my mother Anupa Jacob (nee Nathaniel) and her closest friend Shalini was taken when they were in school at Convent of Jesus & Mary in Delhi. They would have been around 15 years old. My mother was a Rajasthani, from the small town of Nasirabad near Ajmer. Her father was orphaned when a plague hit the village, he and many others were then adopted by the British. Everyone adopted was converted to Christianity and given the last name ‘Nathaniel’. From Nathu Singh, my grandfather became Fazal Masih Nathaniel. He went on to become the Head of the English Language Department at Mayo College, Ajmer.

My mother married my father Philip Jacob, in 1968. He is a Syrian Christian – whom she met while she was studying at school around the age of 15, he was studying at St. Columba’s School.

One of the most interesting parts of my mother’s life was that Shalini, some other friends and she, formed the first ever Delhi University‘s Girl Rock Band called “Mad Hatter” in their 1st year of college at Miranda House. My mother was the lead guitarist and singer. Because of that status, when the Beatles performed, albeit privately in Delhi in 1966, the Mad Hatters were given front seats priority.

My mother had four kids. She was also a piano teacher, and her youngest child and my youngest sister Arunima is autistic but an ace piano player and has performed Beethoven Music pieces with complete accuracy.

My mother suffered a cardiac arrest in 1982, and passed away in 1986. Shalini Gupta, my mother’s friend in the photograph (left) is now a psychologist in London.

My mother Maya Shivdasani is now 90 year old of age. She was born in Hyderabad Sind in 1919 and came to Bombay after her marriage in 1937. After her marriage in 1937 Maya moved to Bombay but would visit her parents in Hyderabad Sind (Now Pakistan) at least twice a year. This photograph was taken on one of her visits to Hyderabad where she was the epitome of style and sophistication: sleeveless sari blouse, short hair, long, painted fingernails.

She has lived in Cuffe Parade all these 73 years, read the Times of India every single day and visits the Cricket Club of India once a week. One of her favourite haunts is the Sea Lounge at the Taj Mahal Hotel. She was truly saddened to see it damaged in the Mumbai attacks of 2008. On the day the Sea Lounge reopened she was there sitting at a window table, sipping their wonderful Viennoise Coffee.

Cottari Kanakaiya Nayudu, or C.K. Nayudu, as he is better known, was born in Nagpur in October 1895.
He made his debut in first class cricket 1916, playing for the Hindus against the Europeans. He played first-class cricket regularly until 1958, and then returned to the game for one last time in 1963 at the age of 68. He moved to Indore in 1923, on the invitation of Maharaja Holkar and would transform the Holkar team into one that would win many Ranji trophies.
Nayudu was the first captain of the Indian cricket team to play England in 1932. His playing career spanned six decades.This picture was found in an old family album belonging to my uncle, Madhukar Dravid. My great-uncles Vasant Dravid and Narayan Dravid were great friends of Nayudu and his brother C.S. Nayudu.

This picture was taken by my great-uncle, Late Vasant Dravid who is some manner also related to Rahul Dravid.

The year the photograph was taken is not known, but my uncle puts it around 1940.

This photo was used by Kodak India for an Ad campaign in the early 1980s.

Sarala Roy was an educationist and is remembered as the founder of the Gokhale Memorial School at Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal. She belonged to the famous Das family of Telirbagh, Dhaka, now in Bangladesh. She was also a member of Calcutta University’s senate and also one of the leaders of the All-India Women’s Conference. The conference was founded in 1927 under the leadership of Margaret Cousins but was soon completely run by Indian women. It was the most important women’s organisation of its time.

She devoted her life to the cause of women’s education and also established a Girl’s school & a Women’s organization in Dhaka, while living there with her husband. Rabindranath Tagore composed the dance-drama Mayar Khela at her request.